


Man and Woman

by Slater_Babe



Category: The Great Wall (2017)
Genre: Bickering, Camping, Confessions, Cuddling, F/M, Fluff, Huddling For Warmth, Nightmares, Period Typical Sexism, Romantic Tension, Sexual Tension, Sexual Themes, mention of childbearing, no beta we die like men, scared of the dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:55:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29972160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slater_Babe/pseuds/Slater_Babe
Summary: In your line of work, you’d always had to act more like a man than the boys you happened to work with. However, when something as simple as windchill waves your determination, Pero is there to remind you vulnerability never killed anybody.
Relationships: Pero Tovar/Reader, Pero Tovar/You
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	Man and Woman

**Author's Note:**

> soooooo this was originally supposed to be 3K of just Pero huddling for warmth with the reader, but then I actually rewrote it for 5K with more dialogue and a bit of a more meaningful, sexual style than originally planned so akdjflalkdjf also ignore how im like writing like a maniac rn adkjfksajdf I have midterms this week and im not studying for them sooooo here you all go!!
> 
> My Tumblr: [slater-baby](https://slater-baby.tumblr.com)

Having grown up on the sunnier coast all your life, nightfall in the desert was a dreadful affair. When you joined William’s little group of rag-tag, random mercenaries, you hadn’t anticipated anything more difficult than the blistering experiences of your service and adulthood to rear its face. Worst case scenario, you’d end up showing a little blood, but any sword for hire had long since become accustomed to the look of their own unique red, so if anything, it was a small price to pay for a semi-regular salary.

Even more, though, as a woman who was not only a soldier but also a rather decent one in this day and age, showing any sort of discomfort or distaste was a surefire path to having your dignity ripped to shreds. Misogyny ran rampant in the villages, and though fellow mercenaries were usually a little more down-to-earth, they were always looking for an excuse to call you deadweight. 

You resisted calling them hypocrites. After all, the two men who’d died in the desert those few nights ago definitely weren’t carrying their water properly, that’s for sure. However, you’d sooner bite your own tongue clean off than you would get into it with Pero or William again over their occasional, acute assholery.

If anything, traveling with such blessed, quiet, irritated company was a godsend, made it easier to forget them when they inevitably took an arrow to the chest.

However, for as much as you’d take their mocking comments over your smaller stature or your inability to carry as many satchels all at once without complaint, you’ve finally seemed to have met your match when it came to not blowing a fuse.

You’d only just departed from the nearest village off the shore of a beachy plain, riding high and hot into the scalding, desiccated desert that lay just to the east of the rolling waves. You’d basked in the salty spray for as long as your two companions would allow it, Pero mumbling something about ‘you’ and your ‘brainless affection for brainless scenery,’ for which you’d promptly slapped him over the head on your way back to the inn stables.

The scent of the roaring sea had followed you long after daybreak, sticking to you like the scorching desert sun that beat harshly on your skin the entire duration you’d ridden that afternoon Eventually as the sun began to set across the barren plains and a valley stands intimidatingly at your feet, the two men had finally decided to dismount for the evening, not wanting to clear an unfamiliar valley in pitch-black darkness. (Not taking into consideration your opinion, as per usual. As an outsider, you pulled the short end of the stick in every conversation).

So you’d set up camp as the sun dipped below the horizon, spinning gold and orange strings of glitter above your head right up until the blackness had swallowed their color, leaving only the light of your campfire to lull you to sleep.

Pero had told you sometime in passing that the desert was always colder at night, that its fiery, desolate nature was only a front for the dangerous, invisible scene of deadly animals that came with the frost of night. You’d never taken his word for it, partially because you’d never give the arrogant bastard that kind of satisfaction, but also because word of mouth was flimsy around these parts. 

You’d never trust what people said until you’d seen it for yourself. You couldn’t hurt yourself like that again, not after the village healer told you your mother was well on her way to recovery, only for her to die hardly two days later, clinging to your childish hands, leaving behind for her 6 year old daughter nothing but the promise of a hard future and days of starvation.

To say you’d been unprepared for his truth on the matter was an understatement.

“I can’t sleep like this-- _please_ ,” you beg quite harshly, wearing the meanest scowl you could muster as you watched the two Europeans unpack their battered furs and cloths, nothing but a single showy dress cloak and a thicker skirt to keep you warm on the freezing, hard ground.

“Ill-luck, then, sister” Pero spits at your feet with a glower of his own, lowering a luxurious pelt of thick bear’s skin over his shoulders.

You roll your eyes at his tone, but feel closer to tears than anger at this point. It was humiliating enough to have to ask them if they had any extra blankets for you to sleep with, but to not only get so emotional over their refusal, and to don a skirt to bed just minutes later...it was the peak of the traditional femininity you’d been trying to run away from ever since you joined the profession.

You were a woman, sure, but in this line of work, you’d always have to be more of a man than the boys around you. 

“Please, Pero, _I’m begging you_. Give me one of your extra furs; I’ll pay you back tenfold at the next tavern,” you move onto bargaining, feeling a jolting shiver run up your spin as the wind whips through the valley below you. On your knees, skirt and cloak clutched between your embarrassed, shaking hands, you stare up at him, willing the water in your eyes not to spill over in his presence. 

Pero pauses where he stands, letting his saddle-bag drop closed with an aching sigh. Looking doubly as big as he normally does with the heavy furs engulfing his broad shoulders, he lords himself over you, stalking just close enough to wrap a thick hand around your chin, tugging it up towards the sky, if only to show you the stern look on his face.

_Demeaning._

“If you wanted my furs, you would be bearing my last name, not fighting alongside me, _woman_ ,” he rebukes with an underlying warning, only backing off once he’s sure you’ve been thoroughly disgraced where you sit.

Your face scrunches up with building anger, mouth opening uselessly to voice a half-prepared insult the other swordsman would surely balk at--and that’s when William finally decides to intervene.

“Would the two of you just calm yourselves and go to sleep?” he interjects, wearing a thick-woven blanket like a cape around his neck. He looks towards Pero first, the Spaniard menacing him the instant their eyes meet, “ _You_ , stop with all those halfwitted comments. She’d sooner fall on her own sword than marry a brute like you.”

You manage a vindictive laugh at the look that crosses Pero’s face with the quip, but then William’s turning to you.

“And _you_ ,” he starts, equally as firm, “can surely survive one night out in the cold. If you can fight seven years for the German crown against the Poles, you can sleep without a blanket.”

At his damning statement, your mirthful resolve falls, and soon, Pero’s the one laughing. You pout like a child, stomach dropping while your hands nervously ball up the fabric you’re holding. However, William’s words can hardly brook an argument.

You were a fierce warrior--a killer for hire, even though most of your coworkers didn’t have the same sort of flesh between their legs. You held your own against the English and the Poles, fought on the front lines in Georgia, even when your sword was blunt and too heavy for your tired arms to hold. 

You were a lying, scheming mercenary, and you could surely survive for a single night without a blanket to cover you.

However, sleeping here in the desert--a landscape you hadn’t even known _existed_ until you asked William what it was called--is something else entirely. With the large woodland areas or cozy inns you’d holed up in on your journey thus far, there was at least the immediate cover of trees or wooden walls to shield you in case of an attack. Their presence was like another body hugging you throughout your sleep: comforting, close, and protective. But out here, on the dunes, where you could see ten miles straight down any line you chose, there was nowhere to run and certainly nowhere to hide.

The cold nips at your wrists while the men go about getting their sleeping areas ready. You glance unsurely at the land around you, staring into the darkness off to the side of the campfire, like some beast was lying in wait beneath its cover, poised to attack the moment you went to sleep, blanketless and shivering. 

_If there was a beast, I’d be able to slay it, you reassure yourself in your mind, ignoring how unsteady your own voice sounds within your head._

You blush as you brusquely call out to the others to turn the other way, resolving just to change into your winter skirts and get yourself to sleep before the emptiness of the desert can get to you. For as rakish and short as they usually are with you, they don’t argue before they turn their backs to let you change. 

As you peel your trousers from your body, the desert wind draws curving lines around your exposed legs, pulling up gooseflesh over every inch of skin they touch. Your teeth chatter and you hurriedly shuck the skirts up around your waist, never having been more glad for their inconvenient, frilly cover than now.

You lower yourself to the ground, sitting with your legs underneath the skirt’s puffy layers, feeling more like a pastry than a human being, what with how unnecessarily elegant they look against the dirty sand. 

“You can look now,” you bite out scathingly, refusing to meet Pero or Williams eyes when they curiously peek at you over their shoulders, never having seen you in a skirt or cloak before now. You pout with a red face, burning with contrite as they observe you.

William clears his throat and goes back to situating his bag as a pillow on the ground. Pero’s eyes linger a little longer, trailing up your form until you bark at him to stop gawking. With that, he says something low and grumbly under his breath in Spanish; you wouldn’t have been able to understand it even if you wanted to. 

You just huff, finally moving to lay down, having to half-throw the heavy pleats of your skirt over your hips to get them situated correctly when you straighten out. You pull the hood of your cloak over your head, burying your icy face in the fur-lined hem, more to hide it from Pero or William than to find any comfort.

That night, you go to bed humiliated and frigid, curled up pitifully next to the dying embers of the campfire. However, you’re left entirely to yourself the minute the sparks fizzle out in the desolate, desert darkness.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

You wake with a start, a stark gasp falling from your lips as you shoot up from your sandy, stiff resting place. You frantically search the surrounding area, head spinning with exhaustion as your eyes trace the open air and heavy murkiness that wades on your every side.

The sound of the dry wind eventually returns to your ears, just barely managing to drown out the sound of your own heartbeat pounding within your chest. You pant rapidly as your fear begins to subside, stifling quietness returning to your body, only to bring with it its own unique brand of trepidation.

Ominousness fills you when your mind begins to clear, pins and needles pricking your skin as you stare listlessly into the darkness at your sides. Dread, anticipation, anxiety - or maybe all three - course through your body at the invisible threats that lie therein, and you hurriedly duck underneath your cloak, squeezing your eyes shut as tight as you can manage.

_It’s not real. There’s no such thing as monsters in the dark. And even then, if there was--_

“There’s no danger, _woman_ ,” a voice calls from behind you, drawing another small flinch and muffled gasp from you, “ _Tranquila.”_

Your heart nearly beats through your chest as the sound washes over you, only for your previous blinding panic to soften the instant you take in their meaning. Reluctantly, you lift the edges of your hood, turning slightly to peer in the direction the voice came.

And, sure enough, Pero stands above you in his worn tunic and trousers, looking every bit as intimidating as he normally did, looming over you like this. You can do nothing more than stare blankly up at him, only to start the instance he throws something large and heavy on top of you.

Your unsteady hands come to pinch at the mass on top of you. Your fingertips meet rich, soft bristles, and your brain immediately shocks to awareness. You slouch slightly as you lean upwards, holding the pelt closer to your eyes. It’s thick and beautifully clean, soaked through with the smell of the forest and something a little headier. You brush your thumbs over the hardy fur, looking up to face Pero the instant you can think past anything but how warm it is on top of you.

You watch his jaw grind, fists clenching.

“To keep you warm,” he answers staunchly, looking away a second later to march over towards the smoking remnants of your campfire. He settles himself beside it with a groan, awkwardly poking at the embers with a stick, pointedly not looking in your direction.

You don’t reply immediately. Instead, you clutch at the furs a while longer, mind still reeling with residual fear and confusion. Your vision swirls in the bear pelts deep, mocha shine, legs blessedly snug under its cover, but you jerk back to common sense the minute your sluggish body will allow.

You fix a snarl on your lips.

“I don’t need your shelter, _man_. I handle myself just fine.”

He doesn’t even scowl. He just continues to poke at the sparkling ashes with a small, sober reply, “I know.”

You scoff, easing into a sitting position to gape at him disbelievingly. The bearskin pools around your waist with the movement, and Pero watches it fall from the corner of his eye. Longing.

“You _know_?” you retort sharply, raising your chin defiantly, “Then, what was all that about bearing your last name instead of fighting beside you?”

“Practical advice,” he answers, shoving the stick into the now crackling fire, before facing you completely. The curve of his mustache gives him an eternal, persistent frown, and the lines of his face only look sharper beneath the shoddy firelight.

“You’d make a finer wife than a swordsman,” he remarks callously, leveling your stare with one of his own.

“Pray, tell: if I’m not a swordsman, then what are you?” you muster a mirthful laugh, body still stunned and shaking, “Let me guess. A stonemason? Or perhaps a valet?” 

His eyes squint at the debasing assertion, a wordless hook he fails to reel you in with.

“You’d make a good chamber boy,” you utter mischievously, and the corner of his mouth twitches.

He looks like he wants to insult you in kind, but for some reason, he resists. He merely turns back to the now twinkling flames, jostling them with his stick and whatever remaining fuel there is in the fire pit. He kindles the fire with surprising geniality, for someone so brutish, but you don’t let him take refuge under the silence.

“If the person who saved you from a simpleminded bandit two weeks ago can’t be considered a swordsman, then you can hardly call yourself one either.”

You lay back on the ground then, turning your back to him in a show of childish resistance. It’s only once you’ve settled and stilled beneath your cloak once again that he chooses to speak, and you open your eyes blearily at his tone.

“Call yourself a swordsman all you want, but I’ve never met a merc who trembled in fear of the darkness.”

Every muscle in your body goes rigid at his observation, brain belatedly realizing that your body was, in fact, still quaking from the shock of your untimely awakening. Heart rate climbing, you try to conspicuously lower your hands beneath the flaps of the fabric, as if hiding your frame now could somehow return the pride you lost to his jab.

You hear the crackling of fire building up behind you, heat seeping into the cloth around your back and legs.

“I’m not scared of the dark,” you lie unconvincingly, “it’s just cold out here. Are you too dense to realize that?”

“You were the one crying over furs at sundown,yet you want to complain when I offer you my own?”

He sounds halfway between impatience and exasperation, throwing the stick into the fire as the flames begin to lick his raised knuckles. He stands with a sigh, moving to kneel beside your prone form, which purposefully goes stiff the minute his knees hit the ground.

“Like you said, I don’t bear your last name, and I certainly don’t need your patronage,” you comment, digging your cheek into the fur-lined hood, moving your gaze as far away from him as you can manage, “I’m perfectly fine on my own. You could do yourself some good by recognizing that.”

“I already have, _hermosa_ , there’s just no point in saying it aloud.”

You can’t help the laugh you let loose at that one, too preoccupied with his allegation to notice the unfamiliar nickname that accompanies it.

“Yet it’s always _woman_ this and _woman_ that,” you shake your head, adjusting your body to try and get more comfortable on the desert floor, “A hell of a hypocrite, are you?”

“Aye, I am.”

You roll your eyes, but don’t make any move to drag this interaction out longer than it needs to be. 

“Whatever, Pero. At least you’re self-aware.”

He doesn’t respond to your words, and you don’t attempt to recognize his persistent presence behind you. You will your eyes shut, trying to fall back asleep more out of spite than out of any actual need for rest. Your rude awakening earlier wrung whatever exhaustion you’d had straight from your body, replacing it with an acute paranoia that still simmers deep in your bones as you try to force yourself back to sleep.

Reticence hangs heavy over your figure while you try to relax your body, doing absolutely nothing to assuage your fear of whatever it was that lay beyond the safety of the campfire or your pitifully thin cloak. You want to inch closer towards that warmth, to the man who sits just a few feet behind you, but your pride refuses to relent an inch of ground for him.

You stew fretfully to yourself for a few minutes, before his voice bellows from over by the fire.

“You know, there’s nothing wrong with being afraid of the dark.”

You refuse to admit the scratchy, low baritone sends shivers down your spine. Instead, you settle for an irritated sigh, as if you were truly on the cusp of sleep rather than panic.

“I’m not scared of the dark.”

“Tell that to the look in your eyes,” he murmurs, and you hear his clothes shift, “We’ve traveled together long enough, _hermosa_. I can tell when you’re scared, and the way you’re shaking can’t entirely be for the cold.”

You don’t dignify his assertion with a response. You just curl further in on yourself, unwilling to admit the fuzzy, unknown feeling that rises within you is a product of his undivided, oddly soft attention.

He continues soon after, though, having a conversation more with himself than you at this point.

“It’s rational, when you think about it. There’s all sorts of things out in the dark. Monsters, men, disservice--you can’t even see it coming. Darkness will always kill you before you kill it. We of all people should know that.”

His words just stoke the worry you’d managed to stave off until now, adding fuel to the fire of your childish worry of monsters in the darkness, some beast beyond the reach of the campfire light that would drag you back to its lair the minute you showed an ounce of vulnerability.

“ _Pero,_ ” you swallow tersely, calling out his name in brusque warning.

You think you feel his hand come to clutch at the edges of the bearskin, but with your back turned, it’s impossible to tell. His accent is weaker when he talks then, mellowed out by something akin to a plea, but too accusatory to be considered one, “Just because I’m not your husband doesn’t make it a crime to depend on me.”

“And just because I’m not your wife doesn’t mean I’m not your equal, _bastard_ ,” you quip shortly, putting every smidgen of fear and agitation you’re feeling into your pronunciation of the words. You ball up the bearskin in your fists before you twist where you lay to finally face him once again. You mask your distress with a burning look of ire, only for it to fall the minute your shoulder blade hit the ground.

He kneeled overwhelmingly low, face mere inches from yours, sunken in with an expression just as intense as your own. You go a little wide-eyed at the proximity, breathing in lungfuls of his musky, masculine scent rather than woodsmoke now that you’re practically breathing the same air.

Your fingers tighten around the furs.

Several emotions flicker over his face before he turns his face, exposing his corded, thick neck and collarbone to your eyes in the process. Unwillingly, you drink it in, the unexplained desire to run your fingers along it welling up within you, though you shake it away just as fast as it appears.

“Who said you weren’t my equal?” he mumbles from somewhere above you, and you counter with unprovoked ferocity.

“Then why do you call me _woman_? Why do you follow me around and leer at me the instant I put a skirt on?” 

You scoff once again, loud tone trailing off as melancholy takes over. You turn your shoulder to him again, pulling the pelt higher up on your body, as if you could hide beneath it without simultaneously losing the fight. 

“Admit it. I’m beneath you.”

He makes a noise of his own then - an amiable, laddish one you’ve never heard before. His fingers trail up the edges of the pelt, and if you weren’t currently buried underneath it, maybe you’d be able to tell he was tucking it in closer to you.

“Sure, I’d prefer if you were beneath me, but not in that sense,” he eventually answers, and you blank at the insinuation.

You go red as a tomato beneath your hood, heart beginning to pound as your mind starts to wander without permission. It’s sinful, really, to even entertain the idea of sharing his bed, but somehow, homely and warm beneath a pelt that carries his exact scent, it isn’t hard to long for. You’ve never been taken before. As a woman, you’d made a point of separating yourself from the lot, and hence the courting scene.

You’d never lain with anyone other than yourself, and you’d certainly never felt the touch of another person below your belt. But with him leaning over you like this, imposing and reassuring above you, you wonder how it’d feel to be encompassed in his stronger grip, to feel him between your own thighs.

You swallow.

“As if I’d bear your children, Pero,” you say weakly, “Even a man as dull as you couldn’t possibly think I’d stoop that low.”

He laughs lowly at that, the type of laughter that comes from deep within your stomach. That kind, belly-laugh.

“I wouldn’t force you to, _hermosa_ ,” he reassures, as if you were a child--and when compared to his experience, perhaps you could be considered one, “Like you said, you’re a swordsman. Can’t say I believe you’d still be able to wield your blade if you were with child.”

It’s certainly a funny image, trying to fight with a large, swollen tummy (a tummy that’s large and swollen with _his child_ , with evidence of whatever sort of _love_ he might have for you).

You refuse to smile, however.

“You’re not helping your case.”

“I don’t mean to disrespect you, I hope you know that.”

“That’s rich coming from you.”

He sighs and you feel his hand wrap around your shoulder. He uses his leverage to pin you to the ground, forcing you still with his strong arms when you resist his touch. He clambors over you when you still beneath him, scowling at him saplessly, having lost your rhythm from the unbidden images his words brought.

The position isn’t helping, either. He seems impossibly big now, thighs and shins resting between your spread ones, with only the cover of the bearskin to separate his groin from yours. You try to hold his eyes, but can’t manage much more than a watery glower.

“I call you woman because that’s what you are,” he whispers, and you can physically feel his words against your face, “I’m a man and you’re a woman.”

“Yeah, but what’s that got to do with anything? You’re a man and I’m a woman, yet I still carry a sword and swing it just as well as you do.”

Your voice is equally as quiet now, but your conviction is no less apparent. You’d die on this bridge, even if your hesistant attraction to him was begging you to concede.

“Aye, but that’s not the point.”

He leans in then, as close as he can without pushing his lips to yours, yet you make no effort to move. With one small surge upwards, you’d be able to taste him, be able to swallow whatever leftover words he had to say before they could pronounce themselves against your skin. 

“I’m a man and you’re a woman, and even if you carry a sword and swing it just as well as I do, I _yearn_ to protect you...even if it’s from something as stupid as the darkness.”

Your pulse races as he says it, meaning and truth overflowing from his profession. You could hear his own reluctance breathing within the sound, yet his confession falls from his mouth almost like it was involuntary, as if the syllables themselves were a poison he had to rid from his body.

The fingers that were tracing the hem of the pelt moves viciously then, brushing up over your loose breast, where he fists the fur in his calloused palms, unaware of the burn it ignites within your body.

You can’t look at his face any longer, staring into the darkness for as much as it scares you if it means you could escape the insistent reaction that’s trying to crawl up your throat.

“I told you, I don’t need your protection,” you insist feebly, clasping the back of his palm with your smaller, shaking fingertips.

“I know you don’t,” he admits, tilting forward to ghost his lips over yours, “But for the sake of myself, I at least want to pretend you do.”

You find an opening and you take it, a grin lining your face as a hint of your smugness returns, “So you admit you feel threatened by me?”

“No, I just admit that I care about you.” he replies with surprising conviction, and if you weren’t currently _aching_ to bury yourself in his homeliness, perhaps you would have interrupted.

The tip of his nose bumps against yours, begging you to turn your head, and you follow without complaint. He shifts at your silent permission, widening his knees to fully lower his pelvis against you, forehead laying in the crook of your shoulder, as if just talking to you was physically hurting him.

Your grip tightens on his flattening palm, pressing it into your chest where the rhythm of your heart thrums strong.

“Is that so hard to believe?” he mutters into the skin of your neck, and for that, you don’t have an answer.

Your fingers itch to curl around his neck, to bury in the hair at the back of his head, see if the strands were as soft as you always imagined they’d be. You bite your cheek, running over every single stupid experience you’d had with him up until this point. For as much as you can’t find a reason to give him an ounce of leeway, your body was screaming with some unforeseen desire, some unspecified emotion that compels you to let him in just this once, to give him the upperhand, just to see if he’d pull one over on you the minute you turned over the reigns.

You silently drop his head, reaching for the edge of the bearskin instead. With some sort of muted, endearing excitement, he straightens up, throwing the pelt off of your body to expose your image to his hungry eyes. His pupils run over your frame as if he’d never seen it before, leaving trails of fire in their wake, before he eventually shocks back to himself and shuffles up your body.

He lowers himself beneath the furs, and with the awkward angle, his figure shadows yours entirely. Though you’d habitually rejected every stupid, showy advance up until this point, you’d never once craved the touch of another person as you do now. 

You were capable and strong in your own right. You knew your way around a sword better than any other merc Pero had ever served with before. You could easily outsmart any opponent who was foolish enough to cross your sight, never mind the fact most of them had a good 50 pounds on your compact frame. You were a prime fighter - a _warrior_ , just like him - and though you know you’ll long for that familiar sense of capability in the morning, you want nothing more than to hide beneath his wide shoulders and sizable body in the moment.

When your breasts meet his pectorals, you don’t hesitate to cling to his tunic, burying your pitiful expression in the indentation of his left collarbone, hot and bothered, but entirely unsure as to what you were supposed to do now.

It was all so strange and new, demeaning in some ways, but more comforting and cozy than anything you’d ever felt in the past decade of your life on the move. Your legs hugged his hips automatically, and you hear him groan at the touch, settling entirely on top of you, as if he just couldn’t help it any longer.

He scoops you up in his arms, pressing your firm and hard to his front, sheltering your body with his own. And it’s then that you realize how much you truly crave his misguided protection, how desperate you were for the feeling of his heartbeat against yours: powerful and all consuming.

Your arms circle his shoulders, and you sigh peaceably, all but melting into his virile, pacifying aura.

His stubble scrapes you cheek when he presses the side of his face against your own. However, you’re suddenly too tired to refute it; you settle for leaning into it instead.

“Sleep now, _hermosa_ ,” he mutters against your skin, “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Swallowed in his arms and holding tight to his shirt, it goes without saying you sleep better that night than you have in years.

**Author's Note:**

> My Tumblr: [slater-baby](https://slater-baby.tumblr.com)


End file.
